Identifying active areas of interest within video data

An integrated circuit, comprising:

• an input circuit configured to receive digitized frames of video data, wherein a given one of the frames comprises a two-dimensional array of pixels;
• a processing pipeline configured to operate on the frames of video data, the processing pipeline comprising:
• a pixel-level filter circuit configured to apply one or more filters to individual pixels of the given frame to identify one or more pixels of interest within the given frame, wherein the one or more filters include a motion detection filter;
• a two-dimensional low pass filter circuit configured to identify pixels of interest that satisfy one or more programmable density thresholds;
• and
• an edge detection circuit configured to generate coordinates of an active area of interest within the given frame, wherein the active area of interest bounds the pixels of interest that satisfy the one or more programmable density thresholds.

A method of processing video data using active areas of interest, comprising:

• capturing sequential frames of video image data;
• for a given frame of the sequential frames of video image data, apply one or more filters to individual pixels of the given frame to identify one or more pixels of interest within the given frame, wherein the one or more filters include a motion detection filter;
• applying a multidimensional filter to the one or more pixels of interest, where the multidimensional filter specifies one or more programmable density thresholds;
• designating at least one group of pixels that satisfies the one or more programmable density thresholds as an active area of interest;
• and
• modifying presentation of the video image data based at least in part upon the active area of interest.